The mesmerizing blueness of a clear sky during between two disasters and a boy’s dream of aviation in Hayao Miyazaki’s feature-length anime.
Jiro dreams of grass and an endless sky with airplanes flying across it like a flock of birds. Italian aeronautical engineer Caproni jumps from one of them and invites Jiro to go with him. The boy is shortsighted and cannot become a pilot, but when he wakes up Jiro decides that he will build beautiful airplanes. As an adult, Jiro becomes an aircraft designer at Mitsubishi. Inspired by the curve of a mackerel bone, he builds the light and beautiful A6M Zero, the best World War II fighter plane. In adult Jiro’s dreams, white flocks of airplanes soar above piles of mangled metal and black clouds of smoke: having been fulfilled, his childhood dream has become inseparable from the nightmare.
Aeronautics is Hayao Miyazaki’s obsession. His characters fly in almost every movie. Imaginary and existing flying machines appear in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Porco Rosso. This fascination has a biographical connection: Miyazaki’s father ran a factory that made parts for A6M Zero airplanes. Jiro from The Wind Rises is based on real-life aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi, who was responsible for the A6M Zero fighter jet. The power of imagination allowed Jiro’s dream of flying to come true, but Miyazaki shows that a creator can be powerless before people’s misuse of their creation and how a dream fulfilled can turn out very different.
The film will be screened in Japanese with Russian subtitles.
The Wind Rises
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Japan, 2013. 126 min.
12+